Interesting Websites (A Work in Progress - Updated 16/01/10)

• General:

- Reddit: Interesting links from all over the internet. The site has loads of subreddits to suit all interests. It may take a while to root through all of the rubbish that's posted, but every now and then you'll encounter a gem. (It's pretty similar to Digg).

- Digg: Digg is always full of useful and interesting articles if you root through the rubbish first. (It's pretty similar to Reddit).

- Stumble Upon: Basically, it adds a toolbar to your browser with a big "Stumble!" button. Press this and the site generates a (hopefully) never before seen webpage for you to take a gander at. You set your preferences at the start (astronomy = yes, sport = no etc.) but it also learns from your rating of each page as you stumble, a simple thumb up or down.

- New Scientist's offical website, containing many arcticles that are published in their magazine.

- The Drew Carey Project: Drew Carey doing short videos on various subjects. There's plenty of great videos on Reason.tv in general too.

- Space and Motion: A good website for anybody with more than a passing interest in Physics and Philosophy.

- This (GapMinder.org) website uses absolutely amazing technology and statistics to graph a huge and varied amount of information. It does so in such an aesthetically pleasing and intuitive way that it makes statisitics (which are often very boring) extremely interesting, and even fun. Mess around with the application for a while, it's truely amazing what you can do. For a demonstration of the software, see here.

- Ask New York Public Library: It's a free service. You can email NYPL a question on anything and they will respond within a few days with reference numbers if you need them.

- Pubmed Central: Provided by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. This website provides alot of medical research info/citations. A good place to check up on drugs and supplements if you want to check out proper research/studies that have been done on them.

- Atlas Obscura: The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist.

- World Digital Library is a website that contains an interactive world map. The beauty is that you can change the date from which the maps are from, giving you a view of the world from different periods in time.

• Social (Sciences):

- Global Issues: If you've ever wondered what exactly is going on in the world, from the Global Recession to the Crisis in Darfur, this is the place for you. Explains everything in a concise and easy to read way.

- A community site, Social-Issues is a good read. You can search for blogs on different subjects; eg. "Poverty" or "Gender Issues" etc.

- Political Science: Polical Research Online. Includes a database of political science works (including a few excellent ones on Ireland). Just "Search Papers" on the bar on the right of the page.

- Current.com have a series called Vanguard Journalism. Basically, it's freelance journalists covering various issues in global affairs.

• Documentaries:

Top Documentary Films: a website that links to hundreds of documentaries, all of which are listed in an intuitive and clean way on the site.

• Archive of Scientific Papers:

- Stanford University's HighWire Press: It's a website which lists literally millions of scientific articles/papers/publications. They claim that they're the largest archive of free full-text science on Earth. Highly recommended.

• Talks - Videos & Podcasts/Webcasts (and Similar):

- I'm sure most of you have heard of the now ubiquitous Ted Talks. Ted offer hundreds of talks from various fields with the intention of spreading knowledge.

- Cato: A huge number of talks on just about everything, from a libertarian perspective. (Somewhat similar to the better known Ted Talks).

- Fora.tv: Similar to cato, but with a more progressive slant.

- Open Culture: A huge amount of information through various media.

- Princeton's UChannel: A collection of public affairs lectures, panels and events from academic institutions all over the world. UChannel makes videos of academic lectures and events from all over the world available to the public. It is a place where academics can air their ideas and present research in a full-length, uncut format.

- The Royal Society's Webcasts: A large collection of webcasts brought to you by the prestigious Royal Society.

- Ear Ideas: Earideas is a collection of the best thought-provoking audio available on the web, updated several times a day.

- Radiolab. Blurb: Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we'll feed it with possibility.

- The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (link). The site has many video talks dealing with the general field of physics/astrophysics/cosmology/etc.

• Science News Websites:

- Eurekalert.org and ScienceDaily offer a huge number of articles/snippets of news from all scientific fields. The number of articles, and the frequency with which they update their sites, can be somewhat intimidating. Excellent sites for getting rid of boredom, though.

- Bad Science: Links to many articles.

- PhysOrg is always interesting, it contains a lot of abstract scientific articles.

- The Register: Similar the Eurekalert and Science Daily.

• Science Podcasts

(Thanks to the Popular Science Forum):

- Discovery News Bulletin.
- Nature Podcasts.
- Scientific American Podcasts.
- Science Friday.
- BBC 4's Material World.
- The Guardian's Science Weekly.
- David Attenborough's Life Stories.
- Here's an eclectic mix of science podcasts from Open Culture.

• University Lectures:

- Lecturefox, Academic Earth and videolectures.net offer hundreds of lecture series' on many and varied topics. One of the great things about these websites is that the majority of the lectures they source come from brilliant universities (e.g. Yale, MIT etc.).

- Stanford University, MIT, and Berkeley channels on YouTube. These YouTube channels offer hundred of lectures on various subjects (similar to above).

• Blogs:

- For anyone interested in psychology at all, I find this very interesting (and sometimes bizarre, but I suppose that's the mind for ya): Psyblog.

- Bloggingheads: Two media commentators, journalists/bloggers doing hour long video conversations... Mainly progressive, but they get the occasional libertarian or conservative in to school people on what's what.

- Journey by Starlight: It tells the story, post by post, of Einstein and another person travelling on a beam of light from a distant star, which eventually hits somebody's eye on Earth. While they're travelling, the blogger, through the persona of Einstein, explains some important scientific phenomenon and facts.

- Conduct Unbecoming: A blog by a friend of The Ministers addressing various issues in Irish politics and society. Some brilliant articles so far, very good signal-to-noise ratio.

- Boing Boing: A great blog on interesting news/trivia with multiple contributors and plenty of daily topics.

• Astronomy/Space Science:

- Nasa Solar System Simulator: anyone that has an interest in space/missions etc. will find this NASA website fascinating: you can track and locate, using a computer simulation, any satellite that has been launched by NASA.

- Heavens-Above: If you're interested in astronomy or want to see satellites in the night sky, comets, Iridium flares, etc., this site allows you to track the objects and it tells you when they're visible and what direction to look etc.

• Other

Imminst.org: A site exploring and advocating research for unlimited lifespans.

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I thought this would be a good idea, so I'll give it ago. I'll list all of the other good links threads that are on various other Boards forums (there are more to be added).

• From the Science catagory:

- Links from the Archaeology Forum.
- Links from the Astronomy and Space Forum.
- Links from the Economics Forum.
- Links from the Mathematics Forum.
- Useful physics links from the Physics and Chemistry Forum.
- Useful links for "normal people" from the Physics and Chemistry Forum.

• From the Society catagory:

- Links from the History and Heritage Forum.
- Links from the Aviation and Aircraft Forum.
- Links from the Military Forum.
- Links from the Philosophy Forum.
- [URL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=225672]Links[/url] from the Politics Forum.</p><p>- Links from the EU sub-forum of the Politics Forum.
- Links from the Atheism and Agnosticism Forum.
- Links from the Spirituality Forum.

• From the Arts catagory:

- Links from the Mythology Forum.

Thanks to everybody for posting links. I would credit people for the links they've provided, but it would make the main post untidy.

When you're adding a link, if it's not too much trouble could you please add a short description of the website, thanks.

zippygirl

Hey thanks for this:
Top Documentary Films!
What a cool site! I cant believe that they show the whole documentaries, that is really nice because i can never find them!

James T Kirk

Searchlores: A fascinating website, with a wealth of information. The owner (Fravia) died last year. Please use and support his website for good reasons only - or he WILL haunt you to the grave... :cool:

Carl Sagan

http://www.khanacademy.org

Salman Khan uses his website to post explanatory videos about Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology. His goal is to provide a world class education to anyone. It's great for anyone wanting to learn about the different sciences.

James T Kirk

Adam Curtis - Charlie Brooker on steroids?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/

James T Kirk

Correction to above:

Lazy comparison.

Brooker is a satirist, Curtis - a serious journalist.

CWone

Great thread. Looking forward to expanding my horizons through this:)

franc 91

You can podcast these programmes and there's a further reading list page and another on who takes part - In Our Time presented by Melvyn Bragg, another programme I find stimulating (among many others) is Thinking Aloud presented by Laurie Taylor.
BBC Radio Four